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Wednesday, March 16, 2016

London Rally against housing cuts.

Here in the UK, the Cameron (Conservative) government has cut £5bn to housing benefit support over the last five years, such as the bedroom tax, and 45 per cent cuts to financial support for homelessness services. Private sector rents are expected to rise by a 16.5 per cent over the next five years, while the number of council houses has fallen by more than 100,000 since 2010 according to the Independent paper.

The Labor Party says that housing benefit cuts will total £11bn over the next five years and council budget cuts will be cut 7%. These attacks on workers and the poor will also have a similar affect as gentrification does in US cities. It will force working class people and lower income residents in to the hands of private landlords and from there out of the city of London completely further gentrifying the city.

As I pointed out in an earlier commentary, London and the Southeast of England is almost like a separate country economically. It is no accident that refugees from war or economic migrants are more often than not sent to poor areas England Scotland or Wales rather than the Southeast. This also creates tension as people already lacking basic social services and jobs are faced with a flood of immigrants often from completely different cultures, languages and religions. It's a divide and rule tactic.

A subsequent competition for survival and already inadequate services breeds a xenophobic anti-immigrant mood often strengthening far right parties. This is a conscious strategy on the part of the British ruling class.
I was reading that the distinct culture, music, language and history of the various parts of the island like the northeast and west, as well as parts of the midlands and other areas that are not connected to London and its environs, is disappearing as museums and other public places that normally preserve it are being closed and neglected due to a lack of funds.

The respected charity Oxfam released statistics this week claiming that the richest1% of Britons have pocketed more than one quarter of the four trillion pounds increase in national wealth since 2000.

The destructive policies of global capital cannot be stopped on a national basis.